CANNES 2024: Cronenberg’s ‘The Shrouds’ is a Bleak Tale of Grief

Grief, its effects, and dealing with it seemed to be a common theme at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with more than a few films delicately tackling the subject matter with many a heavy metaphor and deep allegory. The Shrouds, an arthouse horror/drama by acclaimed writer and director David Cronenberg, premiered at the French fest, is no different. With a premise originally pitched to Netflix as an episodic series but ultimately rejected by the conglomerate, the dark drama has more than just grief to talk about in this digital age, and Cronenberg bares all in an attempt to procure meaningful commentary on a plethora of topics.

The Shrouds follows a lanky, gray-haired, gaunt-faced man, Karsh (Vincent Cassel), entrepreneur, successful businessman, and creator of startup “GraveTech,” which he proudly showcases to his less than enthused blind date. The invention is a macabre sort of technology that installs digital screens on the gravestones of loved ones, providing the ability to watch a live-cam feed of the corpse buried underground, rotting away. Karsh finds the act of watching his late wife decompose in real time to be extremely comforting, as he states he’s never felt closer to his beloved, not even in life.

Complications with ethics and politics arise quickly, as Karsh’s inventive cemetery experiences vandalism and threats from a foreign billionaire mogul who would very much like to monopolize the business worldwide. These factors, combined with the alarming discovery of new polyp-like deposits in his rotting wife’s nasal cavity which he is convinced are tracking devices, spurs Karsh to spirals for a multitude of reasons.

The performances are serviceable and believable in the bleak world they exist in, though aren’t much to write home about. This is unfortunately due to the subject matter and material the talent are given to work with, which comes off as overly restrained and emotionless to the point of non-interest. Cassel gives a fine performance, delivering a solid portrayal of the Cronenberg-doppelgänger Karsh Relikh in his grief, distress and woe.

Diane Kruger is complimentary as Terry, the dog-grooming sister of Karsh’s deceased wife, Becca. To level things up on a macabre scale, Kruger also portrays the late Becca in flashbacks and nude visions, which the sullen widower experiences throughout. Guy Pearce also makes amusing appearances as Karsh’s goofy mess of a brother-in-law. No performance is particularly memorable, but all certainly match the monotonous and sterile universe in which The Shrouds is set.

Karsh himself states, though technically a spiritual man of sorts, is an atheist. He seems to not particularly believe in an afterlife but instead revere the “after-death” process as one might, religion. Perhaps, in watching his own wife rot in the ground for years, he’s fulfilled the way one might be after attending a mass. Themes of spirituality, nihilism, loss and death of course, are present throughout.

It’s just that the themes are diluted enough to not pack a punch, and the pieces never fully come together to send any one message home. It’s twisted and morbid, of course, but relying on these adjectives to set the same one tone for multiple hours and not much else to embellish or adorn the runtime with, well, the film is a crypt, sinking in on itself slowly and assuredly into the earth.

The Shrouds is a cold and stiff film itself, akin to that of a corpse, and not in a complimentary fashion. It’s detached enough to feel unattainable and uninviting, and with a meandering plot that can be hard to invest in at times, it often feels the film as a whole was a stage of grief for the director that needed to be completed in order to move to the next one.

The protagonist, Karsh, appears to be a symbolic surrogate for Cronenberg, not only in looks, as the director’s wife and collaborator of nearly 40 years passed away in 2017. The film lies in the uncanny valley between the mimicry of a biopic, a sci-fi drama, and the result of a coping mechanism.

Cronenberg’s The Shrouds is an overt study of the possibility of over-minimalism in filmmaking. The sets are monochrome and uncluttered, and the clothes are monochrome and unremarkable. The performances are dreary, and any existing score is unmemorable. All this creates an overall blasé attitude towards the film that perhaps was an intentional part — a master plan to create a faux feeling of a stage of grief and numbness for the audience.

But how much should the viewer be told to feel, their hand held by the filmmaker, versus how much should the viewer be allowed to feel on their own accord, via their own interpretation? It personally feels much better to decide that for oneself, even if the answer is respectful indifference.

The Shrouds screened as a part of Cannes 2024.